If you have a scenario
the balance on once credit card is as such
Card 1 - $5,000 (purchases at 4%) $2,000 (cash advance at 12.9%)
Card 2 - $4,500 (purchase at 7%) and $3,000 (carry-over from balance transfer at 3.99%)

What would be the approach you would employ in this case? Does it makes sense to paydown the lower interest debt on each credit card first then attach the higher interst portion?

what is a rrsp and what do you mean graph in excel. tks.

One way that I use to show progress for myself (I only have student debt) is not to use individual balances as my idicator, instead I use my “net worth”.

I take a net worth snapshot every two weeks, straddleing my pay weeks, and graph it in excel. That way I can see that my net worth is rising every time I put it in, and if it is not rising fast enough I check out why.

The one thing that I did to make this method work was to get a line-of-credit. My line of credit interest rate was 9% and is now 6.5% (prime rate cuts). I then put all that I can on it, while putting 10% into a RRSP and another 5% into a future emergency fund.

This method works great and this month I should be net-worth 0 and start moving into the positive.

thanks for stopping by. It makes sense to use credit cards when you can afford to pay them off in full before the end of the month. In that case, it’s essentially an interest free loan. This allows you to take advantage of things like benefits and reward programs (e.g. Air Miles), which are offered by a number of cards. What you need to be careful about though is that your payments go through on time, that are no billing mistakes, and that you can categorically avoid having the balance be carried over to the next month.

Cheers,
Tony

It may sound illogical but my guiding principle on this is ‘use credit card if you have the money’ otherwise, stay off the expenses. Easier said than done, though.

Very relevant topic, I must say.

Best.
alain